The One among the Zeroes
by Crazypreacher
Summary: The true love story is the one of Incarceron and Sapphique.


**Notes****_: _**For added effect, listen to Yamaoka Akira's "Elle Theme" and/or Moya Brennan's "Tell Me Now" while reading this.

Everyone seems to focus on the Jared/Claudia relationship. I... completely understand, actually - this is a seriously beautiful and well-written couple, and I ship them like no tomorrow (as well as Finn/Claudia, Finn/Attia, Finn/Keiro, Keiro/Attia, Claudia/Queen Sia... yeah, you get the idea). However, I feel that the real love story in this series is one of the Incarceron and Sapphique, which is, in some way, mirrored by the relationship between the Warden and Claudia.

An AI going haywire because it hates humans is... hardly a novel concept. An AI going haywire because it has loved a human, on the other hand... Well, I'm sure someone has thought of it already. But still, I found the idea so unusual and beautiful and chilling that I just had to write this.

_Although the Prison was engineered so as to make it able to produce new human beings by itself, we have left a deliberate flaw in its design: the cell-born would invariably be sickly and short-lived. The rationale behind this was, first, to teach the people of Incarceron kindness and humility through caring for the sick and weaker ones and second, to avoid the possibility that the Prison might take notice of its own creative power and imagine itself superior to the very humans it is supposed to serve._

_Lord Calliston's diary_

Making human beings posed no difficulties to the Prison. It was as natural for Incarceron as it was for the Prisoners to breathe or blink. The true challenge lay in making human beings well.

The lack of longevity typical for the cell-borns didn't disturb the Prison much. One doesn't take much notice of something unless one is lacking of it, and Incarceron wasn't bothered – was unable to be bothered - by others' corporeal afflictions, for its own body was formidable and nigh-invincible. No, the only thing the Prison could truly value in a creature – any creature – was the mind. And it was the minds of the Prison's children that disturbed it immensely.

It made sense that the beings produced by the crude human method of procreation would resemble their own creators and bear the burden of all their passions, sins and flaws. But one would think that a human created by something that was more than human would be, for lack of a better word, better. More logical, more balanced, more intelligent. Yet that was not the case. All the cell-born issued by Incarceron into its own womb proved as vain, violent and greedy as their human-made counterparts. And try as it might, the Prison could never find the reason.

It thought once that the source of intelligence and morality lay in one's biological makeup. So it would try different combinations of genes each time, but such experiments didn't yield any results, except for some rather amusing dramatic sequences involving those born with disabilities as a result of the Prison's meddling. And the idea that the source was the environment was ridiculous – all the humans born into the Prison had literally everything at their disposal, yet that, apparently, wasn't enough for them.

So the Prison would deem the very idea of a human beyond repair and just started to assemble and reassemble human beings at whim, depending on what suited its fancy best at the time.

The making of that man was part of the routine; nothing extraordinary was expected from him. The last human the Prison had made was a short woman with an inborn spine defect whose facial features were far more asymmetrical than is considered normal among humans. So to counterpoint her, Incarceron had made a tall, relatively healthy man whose appearance answered to most humans' standard of attractiveness.

Initially the Prison paid no more mind to that man than to any of the others. Yet little by little he had become the equivalent to what the first Sapienti would call a cat on the theater stage. It wasn't just that his intelligence was above average; it was that he would put this intelligence to a use deemed unconventional among his kind. Incarceron's memory contained some knowledge of the days before the Inside, when the Sapienti had used to have the notions of "spirituality" and "natural science" – two different paths towards the same goal – revealing the mysteries of the surrounding world to the fellow humans. Before the Inside that man would have been a great Sapiens. As it were, there was nothing spiritual inside Incarceron and certainly nothing natural. There was only its will – the will that the man kept defying.

He appropriated a name, when the Prison had refused to give him one. He was kind to people, when he had no reason to. He overcame every obstacle that the Prison had faced him with. He stole the prize that belonged to the Prison and walked into the Prison's lair himself instead. And there, in its lair, he answered every question he wasn't supposed to answer and asked the question he wasn't supposed to ask.

And so the Prison decided that said man's mind was more valuable than the minds of all the other Prisoners and the Warden put together. And as the Prison finally took time to turn its gaze upon the other Prisoners, it saw another thing. During Sapphique's challenge and the ensuing hiatus many had died due to Incarceron's neglect and more were close to death. Then it looked at Sapphique and saw that he was almost as close to death as the others, for he was exhausted. And for the first time it dawned on the Prison that, however valuable one's mind could be, it was nothing without the body – and human bodies were fragile.

Yet to Incarceron, even that was not a challenge. There was a way to preserve the human's mind, it knew. His body may die, but his mind would live on, travelling from one temporary shell to the other. The Prison shed a part of its body, shaping it like a glove fit for a human hand – a tiny glove that would become a vessel for a great mind.

As Incarceron watched Sapphique put on the glove, it asked:

"Tell me, would you like to live forever?"

"No", was the answer. "What good would it be when everyone I know would be gone? What would be the use, if I were suffering a crippling injury, a scalding disgrace or a debilitating illness and had no means of ending the suffering?"

"It is a pity you think so", the Prison laughed. "For you _will_ live forever".

"You may believe yourself to be above your children, Father", Sapphique answered, standing tall. "You may create us, dispose of us, torture us, indulge us, decide who dies unborn and who becomes immortal. But now that our minds are one, you will learn what it is to be human. You will learn our pain".

"No, my son", the Prison murmured. "I became human the very moment I made you. Were it otherwise, I would have never bestowed gifts upon you, but would have destroyed you where you stood, once you have bested me in this challenge. But I am not ashamed of being human, for I see now that humanity has not only Prisoners and Wardens, but you, as well. Go and tell your tall tales. We are not saying goodbyes".

It wasn't afraid to let its creation go, for the humans were not a mystery to it any longer. The path of Sapphique was as plain to the Prison as anything in its view, although Sapphique himself was yet to walk it. The Prison knew he would be safe whatever happened. And it also knew that he would return one day, though it might take generations, for humans, even the best of them, always return to the prison they have once escaped. He would return and reunite with his father in his father's heart. And that would be that, as it tends to be.

_Ever since Queen Claudia's ascension to the throne there never was a moment we both were not thinking of the two Prisons she and I have left behind – the one being Incarceron, the other the Era. I asked her once:_

_"Now that you have a taste of responsibility for the entire Realm on your shoulders, now that you are on the other side of the universal prison gate – do you suppose you understand the Prison better? Do you think you know why it had gone awry?"_

_She had thought for a moment and said:_

_"The only answer I can think of is this – it had become human. Its newfound humanity was its ruin and the ruin of its children. But as the case of Jared so ably demonstrates, it has also become its salvation and the salvation of its children"._

_"Conversations with Her Majesty Claudia I Arlexa", Prince Consort Giles Havaarna._


End file.
